I answer 20-25 emails per hour, 8 hours a day, at my job. A lot of times I have to tell people their order has been canceled. About once a month I get a response back from someone that says, "I have been a teacher for 20, 30, etc years and it's CANCELLED!

I answer 20-25 emails per hour, 8 hours a day, at my job. A lot of times I have to tell people their order has been canceled. About once a month I get a response back from someone that says, "I have been a teacher for 20, 30, etc years and it's CANCELLED!

I am not allowed to write back that both are acceptable.

English being weird? I personally use double-LL's, but I know both are okay. Cancelled, levelled, travelled, however, drives Opera's spellcheck nuts.

I answer 20-25 emails per hour, 8 hours a day, at my job. A lot of times I have to tell people their order has been canceled. About once a month I get a response back from someone that says, "I have been a teacher for 20, 30, etc years and it's CANCELLED!

I am not allowed to write back that both are acceptable.

English being weird? I personally use double-LL's, but I know both are okay. Cancelled, levelled, travelled, however, drives Opera's spellcheck nuts.

The double-L is standard UK English. I thought that US practice was to drop the second L, possibly as a result of Noah Webster's campaign to get a strong differentiation between UK and US English.

It does also say that it is less accepted in UK English, if that's where you happen to be.

That was my thought, too, Harriet, about the "onto" and "off of". That was why not using "of" didn't make sense to me.

It was taught to me as a redundant preposition and that the difference was because 'onto' is a word in its own right, but 'offof' isn't. Compare and contrast, as my English teacher used to say, 'continue on' which is also incorrect because the 'continue' implies the 'on'. I'll buy that it's acceptable in the US but it's bad English in the UK (Partridge calls it a 'vulgar Cockneyism' but I do get the impression that he was a bit of a snob. Also a New Zealander, which does make it seem a little odd that he should be the Pure English man).

It does also say that it is less accepted in UK English, if that's where you happen to be.

That was my thought, too, Harriet, about the "onto" and "off of". That was why not using "of" didn't make sense to me.

It was taught to me as a redundant preposition and that the difference was because 'onto' is a word in its own right, but 'offof' isn't. Compare and contrast, as my English teacher used to say, 'continue on' which is also incorrect because the 'continue' implies the 'on'. I'll buy that it's acceptable in the US but it's bad English in the UK (Partridge calls it a 'vulgar Cockneyism' but I do get the impression that he was a bit of a snob. Also a New Zealander, which does make it seem a little odd that he should be the Pure English man).

Oh, have we had 'imply' and 'infer' yet?

Yes, to both of these.

It's a great shame, because one of my favourite songs is "I can't take my eyes off of you", and I both love it and cringe over the "off of" construction.

Are you old enough to remember Terry Wogan on Radio Two, playing Little Things Mean A Lot with the lines

Send me the warmth of a secret smileTo show me you haven't forgot

and cranking up his microphone to add, loudly '-TEN!'?

[In response to starry diadem writing, "It's a great shame, beacause one of my favourite songs is 'I can't take my eyes off of you', and I both love it and cringe over the 'off of' construction."]

Folks -- have you not heard of poetic licence? I admit to personal prejudice here, in that Terry Wogan is one of my pet hates, and most un-favourite (if that isn't a grammatical barbarism) people on the entire globe.

Folks -- have you not heard of poetic licence? I admit to personal prejudice here, in that Terry Wogan is one of my pet hates, and most un-favourite (if that isn't a grammatical barbarism) people on the entire globe.

Of course. Rearrangement to make the thing scan and rhyme is common enough, and there are other songs in which the grammatical infelicity doesn't grate as much - on me. It presumably would on somebody else. But surely that's what we're seeing throughout this thread: that the reaction to any 'error' ranges from 'meh' via a sharp intake of breath to the desire to run amok with an Armalite and all stages in between depending on personal experience and preference.

For the past year, I've been an officer of a club that requests funding from several sources. The club instructor has been teaching here for many years and is very invested in the club. Since he is very familiar with the plans for all of our annual events, he usually writes a first draft of the funding applications. However, since it's my name and my signature that goes on them, I always do the final editing. This man has an interesting approach to capitalization, punctuation, and parenthetical comments.

The capitalization tends to look like he capitalized normally (beginnings of sentences, proper names, etc.) and then loaded a shotgun with capital letters and fired it at the page. Some of the odd capitalizations look like a misguided effort to emphasize a word, but others completely baffle me. I also remove a lot of commas (that must be the second round of shotgun fire) and a lot of parenthetical statements that seem irrelevant or redundant.

As an example of his style, he will write an email to me and other club officers that says something like:"Onyx, please contact Mary (Venue Event Manager) about the Weaver's Swimmeet (vintage underwater basketweaving workshop) and tell her we will need a Microphone for Dr. John Weaver (Expert Underwater basket Weaver and Teacher with 18 years Experience)."First of all, all "Mary" needs to know is that we want a microphone. She doesn't care if its for Dr. Weaver, basket-weaver extraordinaire, or an Elvis impersonator. Second, Dr. Weaver's years of basket-weaving experience have nothing to do with whether he needs a microphone; he needs a microphone because he has a quiet voice and is teaching in a large venue. Third, all the recipients of the email know Mary, and what type of event we're having, and who Dr. Weaver is, and why he is teaching here, etc., etc. We've been planning the darn event and dealing with Mary for every previous event this year!